NASCAR 2012

Looks smaller than a NASCAR truck.

But that said, there are companies out there that take NASCARS, add lights, catalytic converters, and whatever else is required, to make it street legal.

There are race classes for trucks in SCCA, and probably other club racing as well, but I'd doubt you'd want to drive a truck burdened down by being street legal.

As for the race today, I missed the ending, as I had a 2hr race that had me heavily involved, but holy cow, I saw Johnson in the pits with damage and his car being beat on, then tonight I look over the standings, and see that he pulled a top 10 anyway, smokes! Also Danica was pretty epic. Race seemed to have a lot of cautions, so it wasn't as interesting to me as some of the great mostly green flag races we've had this year, that also probably explains why I know very little that happened in it.

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XUWKzRMMhU[/ame]

 

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/103633

Who's kidding who here?

Doutbless the multiple million dollars of "Go Daddy" sponsorship help soften the blow...

Ed

 

great article for any apologist. she simply does not have the chops. she has been blessed with the finest equipment in both the nationeide and sprint series. she has had a full schedule in nationwide and a solid schedule in sprint...she has had exessive test days as well. she has destroyed a huge number of her own cars. she has crashed or attempted to crash hornish or cassal. her model for success has been win the war of attrition...to which she has had some success.

but make no mistake, only danica really believes she is a racer and that she belongs among the elite in her previous or current series.

among the many things i find offensive about the danica experiment is she being dubbed the :gueen of nascar". richard petty was called the "king" but he had a few hundred wins to show for! lol.

 

she has done her usual temper tantrums (this time in the car instead of in front of a camera or on pit lane), she needs to grow up if she wants to hang in NASCAR.

however, go look at Tony Stewart's rookie season in Nationwide (Busch), or Jeff Gordon's, or Franchitti or Hornish in Nationwide or Cup, etc etc....stock cars are a b!tch to drive, and totally different from anything open wheel. so in terms of speed and learning curve I really don't think she's that far off.

If she's still off the pace and wadding up cars this time next year, different story.

 

They just showed on SPEED that a skydiver was coming in for a landing in the grassy area between the finish line and pit road at today's Texas race just like they do at a lot of races and he was flying a flag beneath him that was weighed down by a sand bag. He miss judged his landing and came down right over the cars lined up to race and the sand bag slammed into the side of the #29 car putting a big dent right in the drivers's side number.

 

Ouch! I don't like Harvick, but crews spend so much time making sure the car is right for tech and the race that its a shame to have something like that happen when your car is all the way through the process and ready to go.

There are only two sprint cup drivers in the sport that I wouldn't care if it happened to, as they consistently tear their car up anyway so if it happens a little earlier, it was bound to happen anyway.

I watched the last race from the Race Buddy, I only followed Brad K. for the entire race start to finish, was fun to see and hear the perspective of just a driver's radio, and the camera's attached to the car. Brad was a little stubborn about adopting a different race line other than the tight line, when he tried to move a little, he got better times, but fell back to his old line. Maybe it was a tire wear issue, the spotter told him to move back out a little, and Brad never responded either on radio or with his car. It was at a time they were trying to stretch their tires out(They'd didn't have many tires left behind the pit wall due to frequent stops to adjust the car).

Penske has done a very good job of keeping their cars from blowing up, its put them in a championship position. If Gibbs could do the same, they'd still be a contender.

 

Yikes. I haven't found the video yet but found this pic on twitter, http://twitter.com/KevinHarvick/status/265156536849010689/photo/1.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

They've replayed it a few times on SPEED and I'm sure it will continue

I should add the skydiver was fine and from the replay you wouldn't have guessed the sand bag hit the car but can see how it happened. They even show the sky diver standing next to the car smiling. The best part is when one of Harvick's crew members drags over a NASCAR official to show what happened and the official looks up in the air like a house is going to fall on him. Officials have allowed the #29 team to pull the car in the garage and make the necessary repairs.

 

Not the best quality but here's the video...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlhrdY6i4HQ[/ame]

...and another pic...

http://twitter.com/WendyVenturini/status/265162697941843968/photo/1/large
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I can just imagine standing there on pit road trying to get some pictures and getting clobbered in the back of my head by a sand bagging sky diver.

 

Really great racing especially with the leaders racing so hard with so much to lose.

While it might not seem like much, I'm a bit irked as to the reporters going on all day about how great a " Chase " Kyle Bush is having when he isn't even in it.
They said it about six times including his post race interview.

 

What about that "eleventeen car" of Denny Hamlin?

 

how could we expect to see the best car win?

keselowski drives a dodge...dodge is leaving. is it even something we could enjoy thinking about...a brand other than GM winning the chase? Hell no!!!!

how funny was it to see the "debris" yellow come out each time danica was about to go another lap down!

BK said it best, hard to win when they continually hand it to some else!

what a lame series this is...i hate to say it but it is getting worse if that is possible. keep in mind that i am a race fan and seldom miss watching a nascar event. it is just getting hard to bare!!!!

i honestly could go on and on but i just dont have the bandwidth tonight.

 

Danica holding up Brad did end up working in Brad's favor on one of the stops, the first one she was there. Next time Brad knew she'd be in the back with the right side hanging out, so the team tried to stop early, but brad locked it up badly, can't blame her for Brad ending up at the forwards end of Brad's pit stall. He nailed it the last time, the time it counted.

I watched all but shortly after the first green flag run ended, from Brad K's car cam. They did a good job. Because of this, I don't know where Danica was when the cautions came out, but I could tell on the radio that the #2 team wasn't expecting her on the lead lap time after time. There was a lot of frustration on the radio about it.

The #2 team is my fav for this season. I was really disappointed when Brad spun his tires badly on that last restart, I heard his engine rev up faster than it should, then he had to back off the throttle, and get back in, giving Jimmy a run on him.

The thing about the #2 team, is they learn, move on, and practice what they need to. They are becoming a VERY tough team. I really like listening in on them the most out of any team in the chase.

For what its worth Pete, Brad's spotter told Brad that one of the other drivers had told his spotter of the debris, and to expect a caution in a few laps. It wasn't a ghost caution. It is one of the frustrating parts about Oval racing. Go re-watch Mario Andretti's Indy crash when he hit a small piece of debris, that put him airborne into the catch fencing. The NASCAR's are heavier, but NASCAR doesn't want to see a car taken out of contention from it taking a hit in a sensitive area.

Did they cut the interviews short on NASCAR.COM? Brad didn't say as much as is implied in this thread, although he certainly said it over the radio to his team prior to being interviewed.

 

andrew,

you and i were both riding in BK's car it seems. you are right, cool dynamic between driver, crew chief and even the "boss" adding a comment or two!

again, dodge will be done no favors but gm....

 

So, you don't think BK pitting and taking only 2 tires when everyone else took 4 had much to do with it for awhile there?

You think nascar wants a Hendrick car to win it, with all the cheating they have been fined for over the last 3-4 years?

I think quite the opposite - a BK win would attract more people to it than a ho-hum title #6 for one team.
I think, unless 48 crashes or blows up, it's over, because the next two tracks are arguably BK's worst two tracks,
Phoenix is one of JJ's best, and he's OK at Florida.

 

you don't think the golden rule applies in nascar?

do you not think the hendrick team is THE ONLY GM team that can win a title?

you think there is a reason toyota has danced on the competition pre chase but mysteriously fails to EVER win a sprint cup title?

you think dodge winning a title after announcing exit from the sport is feasible?

do you think debris cautions never occur unless...there is really debris?

do you think the best driver, car or team wins races?

just curious. i'm not even trying to joust here and honesly don't think your answers if different than mine would materially change my thoughts.

 

and yes...two tires is never faster than 4 tires however before all the yellows keselowski was checked out.

last question...do you think nascar would rather finish races with the pack strung out or do they prefer to find a way to bring em back to a good ole fashion bunch sprint for the cash?

 

Chevy (and/or Hendrick) must be writing a damn big check, as they have basically won all but 2 of the Chase championships (Kurt Busch won the first, Tony Stewart won the second...in a Chevy, but for Gibbs). last year was effectively a Hendrick car with Stewart/Haas; all the others have been JJ.

I do know this: if the idea of the Chase was to make it an "any one of a dozen guys/teams can win...", it's failed miserably.

 

But, but...they threw "The Chase" open to "wildcard"
entrants!

When they let those two extra cats and their hot rods in, it certainly turned the whole deal upside down. Ha!

The mere suggestion that the NASCAR races and championships
are fixed is unimaginable.

BHW

 

Pete, I don't want to get any friends in trouble, so I've often deleted a lot of what I wrote on "fairness". NASCAR though, is made up of individuals. Something out there public I could mention, is the #48's huge penalty at Daytona. The #48 was singled out, and was penalized despite never running the race on the "ilegal" parts. Other teams, that saw the #48 penalized, switched their rear pillars out - no penalty. On the tech officials level, obviously, Hendrick is getting the poo end of the stick. They appeal, and keep appealing, until, they get to the top appeals guy who is an ex GM executive. I thought that was a conflict of interest there, and expected the final decision to be a lot softer than the past ones. In the end, they still ended up penalized, but not as harshly.

I think it kind of evened out, the #48 was penalized far too harsh, considering that other teams cut and replaced their body parts in the NASCAR garage.

Sometimes officials make frustrating decisions, and like world cup soccer, everyone has to move on.

Toyota falls apart in the chase mainly because their teams haven't been able to take the pressure. Gibbs has been blowing it for three straight seasons I've followed NASCAR. KB self destructs, mechanical failure, and driver error.

 

Off the top of my head I believe they studied how close drivers were in contention for the championship near the end of each season and found they never had a bunch of drivers in contention. Except for a few close races like the one for the 1992 Winston Cup it has usually boiled down to just a few drivers or a one driver runaway.

So they took their data and decided that the last ten races was a great place to try and tighten up the competition by implementing the Chase format. They later tweaked the format by changing how they reset the points, awarded more points for wins and then added the wildcards to increase the possibility of having more drivers in contention for the championship coming down to the last race of the season.

Setting aside the argument that having the Chase eliminates a dominant driver over the first 26 races chances of winning the championship, the Chase format, in theory, opens the door for the possibility of having several drivers fighting for the championship down to the last race just like 1992 when four drivers had a chance to win it at Atlanta.

The top 10 drivers in the first 26 races get the privilege of competing for the Championship. Two wildcards are picked based on their performance. The top ten drivers have their points reset to all the same and those that have won during the first 26 get 3 bonus points added. Bonus points don't apply to the wildcards.

So the first race of the Chase has those 12 drivers fairly close with any one of them having a chance at the start of that race to win the championship. Then two things happen. Some of those drivers will experience unpredictable problems like Jeff Gordon in his first race which put him in a hole he can't get out of even though he has been super strong ever since. The other thing is the cream will rise to the top and this time it is the #48 and the #2. The #11 should've still been in the mix but they self imploded, again.

Those problems are not manipulated by NASCAR to get their desired outcome. They are problems that occur naturally in competition and illustrates just how critical every little detail is. The #48 and the #2 have out performed everyone else and earned the position they are in. There are far too many variables to imply that the Chasers are in their respective positions because of NASCAR's manipulation or fabrication.

History shows that there has never been 12 drivers competing for the championship with a few races to go. Having the Chase increases the chances but the cream still rises to the top and that is because of the racing they do.

 

1) yes, to a small extent. but - Richard Petty WAS nascar, why did nascar 'drop' him?

2) no, I don't think that.

3) Toyota chokes. lots of teams do.

4) yes.

5) I don't think that, I've seen 'ghost' flags - that benefit many different teams.

6) ABSOLUTELY.

I don't care to argue your thoughts - or anyone else's, nor would I expect folks could sway mine, if we ALL had the same thoughts life would suck.

'stuff' happens for all kinds of reasons, do you think nascar WANTS the Busch brothers there?

I just think #48 has the perfect combination right now, and like most other sports, they got hot at the right time, they have been there before - 5 times - so they know how to act. I am not a 48 LOVER, but it's no different than Vettel/Red Bull: they started slow, and got better. Has Red Bull 'bought' the FIA?

 

this race is turning into a wrestling match